He had mentioned that he had seen me years before at the Victory Ball in Edinburgh Castle. He knew people I knew. He hinted that I had had the reputation of being a bit eccentric. From his floppy grins it had been obvious that he thought my eccentricity had since progressed, like a disease, which was why I had given up my home Pennvalla and my famous wife, to come and live in a wet wilderness with a woman regarded locally as eccentric too.
Talking about Kirstie he turned wistful. Perhaps the story that when eighteen they had been lovers was true.
I felt no animosity towards him on that account.
The procession halted not far from where he waited. This was not in deference to him, it was simply felt that another halt was due. Some of the mourners whose crofts were on his land lifted their hats to him, those independent of him raised their bottles. All were as respectful to him as a tribe in Africa might be to a representative of another, which had bigger huts, more cattle, and more ornamental women.
He came limping along towards me.
‘I say,’ he said, shyly, ‘do you mind if I join in? I’ve known Miss McDonald, you know, since we were both ten years old.’
Dugald by this time had had many bottles pushed into his mouth along the way. He had therefore been shedding some uncharacteristically noisy tears for Kirs tie, and uttering some uncharacteristically bellicose complaints about his having to leave his ancestral shore. He was in no mood to welcome a laird.
‘It would have fitted you better, Mr Pert-Thompson,’ he cried, ‘if you had done your duty by her while she was alive. For years her thatch was falling in, many times you and your factor were told, and not a damn thing was ever done about it.’
By general agreement a funeral was no place to debate a landlord’s responsibilities towards his crofting tenants. Still, there was plenty of time, the sun was shining and larks singing, no one there loved a laird and this one anyway was an incomer, the whisky was flowing, and Kirs tie had never been one for demanding attention, so none bothered to chide Dugald or apologise on his behalf. Indeed, some of the most boldly inebriated congratulated him in Gaelic, a language the laird did not know. Hector, though, whispered to him to be quiet.
Simultaneously like ants, the mourners decided to move on. The coffin was picked up, empty bottles were tossed into the heather, and those with whisky still in them stowed in pockets.
Pert-Thompson walked beside me. ‘Sorry about that, Corse-Lamont,’ he muttered. ‘I know the poor chap’s badly upset. He and Kirs tie were neighbours for a long time.’
‘Now that Kirstie is gone,’ I said, ‘he is faced with the reality that East Gerinish is an economic impossibility.’
It must be remembered that, as chief mourner, I was constantly having bottles pressed on me. Those offers I could not refuse.
‘It always was, you know.’
‘He thinks that you, as landlord, could have helped more than you did.’
‘I’m afraid the place is just a bog, a beautiful bog perhaps, but a bog just the same. By the way, I met a chap a few weeks back who was in the Perthshires with you during our War. He thought you’d gone to Australia.’
We had now followed the coffin into the kirkyard.
I noticed that the grave had been made to look more like a grave. A couple of the mourners with mud on their best boots and trousers were leaning on spades, which I did not recognise as mine: they must have brought them with them. They had a way of spitting on their hands that showed them to be professional gravediggers.
All at once the whole concourse of mourners became aware that there was no minister to take the service. So far as I could see there were no consultations. Yet a solution emerged.
Two old men approached me. The younger, who must have been at least seventy-five, I remembered as one of the passengers in Big Ian’s bus the day I had come to East Gerinish. Big Ian himself was dead. This leathery old man looked as if he would outlast another two bus-drivers at least. He introduced himself as Daniel McIsaac.
‘There is no minister,’ he said.
‘Four were asked,’ I replied. ‘All refused.’
Pert-Thompson was shocked. ‘Did they, by Jove?’ he murmured.
Old McIsaac gave him a scornful look. ‘It was proper for them to refuse,’ he said. ‘Kirstie McDonald when all is said and done did not live in the way a Christian woman should. Also, she dressed in men’s clothing, which Scriptures tell us is an abomination.’
‘As a young girl,’ sighed Pert-Thompson, ‘she was the most beautiful I have ever seen.’
McIsaac was too old to be knocked down for his abuse of Kirstie; in any case, he had not really said it abusively. And Pert-Thompson’s praise of her more than compensated.
‘Hamish here has agreed to do what is necessary,’ said McIsaac, introducing his companion as Hamish McKinnon. ‘He used to do a lot of lay-preaching before old age weakened his wits. He’ll manage fine, if somebody keeps a hold of him. He’s tumbled into a grave before now.’
Mr McKinnon gave us a whisky-scented, donnered, blissful smile.
There were bound to be comic elements in a funeral service conducted by a tipsy old man of eighty who had to be held on either side, and who several times fell asleep on his feet. The singing too, led by a retired precentor, with his tuning-fork that he struck against the handle of a spade, was all in Gaelic, and excessively lugubrious. Also it consisted of not just one hymn, which would have been quite enough, but half a dozen, one of which, judging by the tune, was ‘By cool Siloam’s shady hills’, which had for me poignant connotations. Several of the mourners, feeling drowsy, wanted to lie down in the sunshine and enjoy a snooze, but they were not allowed to, being kept upright and awake by digs in the ribs, admonitory coughs, and, in the worst cases, knees in their behinds. Pert-Thompson spent most of the time knocking off clegs that feasted on his fat neck. He was the only man there that the grey-winged bloodsuckers tormented. The accessible skin of everyone else, including me, was too tough.
I was aware of these, and other, comic aspects. Yet, at the finish, when every man there, including the laird, was taking his turn to throw a valedictory spadeful of earth on to the grave, I was in tears.
I thanked McIsaac as spokesman for the rest.
‘It wasn’t for you,’ he replied, frankly. ‘It was for Kirstie. And not just for her either. It was for her old father whom everybody liked. As for yourself, you’ll be going back now to wherever it was you came from. That is what we all recommend.’
I said nothing.
An hour after the coffin had been covered they were all gone. None was left behind. Those unable to walk were cleeked by others not too steady on their own legs. Pert-Thompson, after shaking hands with me and again nearly inviting me to his house, took his leave. Dugald and Hector went too: Mairi and Ailie would be waiting for them in my house, with tea ready. I was left alone with larks and empty bottles and memories of Kirstie.
SEVENTEEN
The McLeods left East Gerinish early in October. Mairi and the children had wanted to go earlier. They saw no sense in waiting for corn to ripen if it was never going to be harvested. But they had patience with Dugald, who still on wet or dull days would go and stand in the midst of his corn, as if to comfort it, and on sunny days as if to praise it.
It was no good reminding him that there was taller, more golden corn waiting for him on the farm near Inverness. We knew that East Gerinish meant more to him than it did to the rest of us. There had always been a religious quality in his devotion to those sour acres. Whether ploughing a piece of soggy ground or mending a dyke, he had really been building his temple.
I have tried to do justice to his attitude in my unpublished poem ‘Clearing a field of stones’.
Their flitting involved carrying their belongings to the road-end where a van waited to take them to Lochmaddy. About a dozen men from Cullipool walked over to help, without being asked. They were soberer and more thoughtful than at the funeral. The Gaels’ songs about leaving home are sadder th
an those about death. They talked quietly among themselves about the likelihood of other townships falling derelict, and even about the possibility that the whole island one day would be given over to gulls, geese, and lairds.
I refrained from pointing out that East Gerinish was not yet quite derelict, since I remained. They did not take seriously my intention to stay. I overheard them agreeing among themselves that a winter on my own would either kill me or drive me away. They talked about an old man in another abandoned township who had lived by himself for over twenty years, but he was a native of the place and could subsist on whelks and dulse.
On their last journey to the road-end the McLeods stopped at my house to say goodbye. There were only three of them, Hector being already at Inverness. It was a sunny afternoon, and we talked outside.
They had only a few minutes, Dugald said, looking at his watch. A car would be waiting for them at the road-end. They would spend the night in the hotel at Lochmaddy. Tomorrow they sailed for the mainland. He would never come back.
They were dressed in their Sunday clothes. Mairi seemed more anxious about their not getting mud on their shoes than about their leaving me on my own. But I was not deceived.
We talked about the weather. Dugald, looking again at his watch, remarked that if I didn’t do something about the stack of peats I had built it would let in the rain, right down to the ground. He also reminded me to be sure to milk my cow Maise regularly. He had no high opinion of me as a milker; neither had she.
Ailie promised to send me a postcard from Inverness. She was the only one crying.
Mairi looked as if she was about to say something affectionate, in acknowledgment of our friendship of over ten years; but she could not think of anything in the four minutes exactly that Dugald allowed.
Ailie kissed me on the cheek. Mairi and Dugald shook my hand. Mairi murmured that if I ever was in Inverness I was to be sure to look them up. It was obvious she didn’t think I would: these inadequate farewells were forever. Dugald said something that he had said several times before during the past few weeks. With my record in the last war, and with so many high-class friends I should not find it hard during the present one to land some easy well-paid job: there were always plenty going. My hands would get soft again in no time.
Ailie whispered that when I was putting flowers on Kirstie’s grave I was to put one on for her.
Then they were gone. Several times while they were still in sight Ailie and her mother turned and waved. They must have thought I looked forlorn at the door of my house, with all round me the solitudes of East Gerinish. It seemed to me they were more forlorn. They were the last true exiles. I did not count. This had never really been my home, no more than Pennvalla or Siloam Cottage or 437 Lomond Street.
Mrs McRorie is right this time. It seems I am dying. I have had a slight stroke. I should be in hospital. At least I should see a doctor. It is all this writing that has done it, she says, more truthfully than she knows. The strain of writing with necessary restraint about Kirstie’s death has been too exhausting.
I will not be buried in East Gerinish. Here in Glasgow will do just as well. Kirstie will be with me until my last flicker of life; after that both of us will be nobody’s business.
It may be that this manuscript will never be read by anyone but myself. If that is the case, it does not matter that in these last pages the handwriting has become well-nigh indecipherable. If I am very patient, and take six times as long as I used to, I can form clear enough sentences in my mind, provided I attempt neither passion nor subtlety, but however I strive the pen in my fingers has little force and produces only squiggles that, an hour afterwards, I can scarcely understand myself
Part Six
ONE
When my own turn came to go, at the beginning of March, on a dull blustery morning, there was no one, not so much as a cow or dog or hen (all sold or given away) to say goodbye. Carrying a smaller suitcase than the one with which I had arrived, I set off at as steady a pace as I could, considering how at my heels howled the demons of self-insufficiency that had been my companions all winter.
I had already the day before said farewell to Kirstie in her grave, but as I passed the kirkyard I had to pause, even at the risk of letting those demons race on ahead.
As a last gesture, shaking my fist at the sky would have been foolish. So too would have been kneeling on the stony track, for I had only a dead woman of no conceivable influence to pray to. In desperation therefore, I saluted, as I had done at the Gantock War Memorial; and while I was doing it I heard curlews advising me to go back to Gantock, and help it endure not only the dreadful nightly expectation but perhaps also the more dreadful reality, of air-raids.
Then I picked up my case and went on my way.
On the red posting-box the old hawk perched. It did not rise until I was close. I had seen it there many times. I liked to think that we knew and respected each other. ‘Goodbye,’ I shouted up as it hovered over me. ‘Goodbye,’ it mewed down. I could see its eyes. They were not contemptuous. It felt no goodwill towards me but it felt no enmity either. It had its own secret life to lead, my presence or absence made no difference. I wished it well.
The car I had arranged to meet me at the road-end was late. I waited stoically in the small wooden hut I had helped to build, with small spiders falling on to my neck. After being so long out of the world, I must on no account show impatience with its inefficient, inconsiderate, and selfish ways.
The car turned up over an hour late. Instead of apologising, the elderly ill-looking driver grumbled surlily because I was not carrying a gas-mask: his own was slung round his neck in a cardboard carton. He muttered that his taxi was a public conveyance, and his boss’s rule was that passengers must have their gas-masks with them.
Patiently I explained that I did not have a gas-mask. Also I pointed out that nothing was less likely than that gas bombs would be dropped on us on our way to Lochmaddy.
My courtesy and reasonableness seemed to offend him more than my gasmasklessness.
Perhaps, I thought compassionately, the poor fellow had a son serving at sea or was afraid he had cancer. The ruder he or anyone else was the more gracious I must be. This tactic, I soon discovered, when tried out on him gave me much satisfaction and strengthened my self-confidence, but somehow increased his surliness.
I quickly had it confirmed that to be calmly tolerant of the nervous ill-temper of worldlings not only gave me satisfaction and confidence, it even exhilarated me. In effect and taste it outdid the finest whisky. Was it, in humbler degree, how saints and martyrs felt?
The handyman at the hotel, who boorishly told me that it was not part of his duties to clean the shoes of those merely lunching and not staying overnight; the waitress who attended to other people before me though they had come into the dining-room at least five minutes after me; the fat greedy bore in green plus-fours in the lounge complaining about the frequency of spam for lunch and the scarcity of whisky; the three idle fellows (it amazed me how in a country at war there could be so many of them) hanging about the door of the public bar, who ignored my politest of requests that one of them might be so good as to carry my suitcase down to the pier for me; the agent there who told me with unnecessary brusqueness that there was no cabin available; and the porter, a man of sixty or so, who muttered in Gaelic (thinking I would not understand) that I was big and conceited enough to carry my own case on board, and didn’t I know there was a war on, and people were supposed to carry their own luggage? all these, and others, who either paid me no heed at all or else churlishly turned their backs (in so small a place, in so short a time, there seemed an astonishing number of them) I not only forgave, if not quite instantaneously, but also sympathised with, for they had not had my opportunity to scour their souls of the inspissated moral grime that, alas, inevitably accumulates during human intercourse.
Is this forbearance of mine genuine, I kept asking myself, is this philanthropic graciousness sincere? Will they be perma
nent or will they soon wear off?
I examined the possibility that I was not really interested in these other people; that I was still, as in the past, interested mainly in myself. I recalled how, when I was turning the other cheek, as it were, to the fellow who had refused to clean my shoes, I had not bothered to study the effect on him of my purged and vital humanity, I had preferred to study its effect on me. I, not he, had been exhilarated.
Perhaps, though, I was being unfair to myself. It could well be that my experiences in East Gerinish, taken all together, but particularly my love for Kirstie and hers for me, had made me, unknown to myself, a good man. During the past ten years life had not been easy. There had been very little free-wheeling. On the contrary, there had been nothing but braes. This past winter had been one of Himalayan steepness.
Surely I was entitled to accept, as a possibility at least, that I was returning to Gantock, not as the saviour I had in my magnanimous and extravagant youth dreamed I might be one day, but as a giver of courage and hope.
TWO
In the crowded, stuffy, and smelly third-class compartment—there was no other kind on that too democratic train—on the way from Glasgow to Gantock, a grey-haired, tidily dressed middle-aged woman, after eyeing me for some time, leant forward and whispered hoarsely: ‘Excuse me, mister, but I’m thinking you never got that tan in this country.’
The others in the compartment, all whey-faced like her, waited sullenly for this toff in the cape, kilt, and balmoral, this brigadier in mufti, to snub her for her inquisitiveness, which they knew was well-disposed and indeed complimentary, but which I, member of an alien tribe, would consider vulgar.
‘You are right, madam,’ I said. ‘Not in this country.’
I used the accent that I had evolved in East Gerinish: not quite landed gentry, not quite officer-and-gentleman, but not mere school-teacherishly superior either; in short, it was an attempt to make an authentic Scottish accent sound refined without at the same time sounding artificial or effeminate.
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